To the Working Women

Written:21 February, 1920First Published:Pravda,February 22, 1920Source:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English
 Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, page 371-372Translated:George HannaTranscription/HTML Markup:Sally RyanŒCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002.
 Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

Comrades, the elections to the Moscow Soviet show that the
      Party of the Communists is gaining strength among the working
      class.

It is essential that women workers take a greater part in the
    elections. The Soviet government was the first and only government
    in the world to abolish completely all the old, bourgeois,
    infamous laws which placed women in an inferior position compared
    with men and which granted privileges to men, as, for instance, in
    the sphere of marriage laws or in the sphere of the legal attitude
    to children. The Soviet government was the first and only
    government in the world which, as a government of the toilers,
    abolished all the privileges connected with property, which men
    retained in the family laws of all bourgeois republics, even the
    most democratic.

Where there are landlords, capitalists and
      merchants, there can be
      no equality between women and men even in law.

Where there are no landlords, capitalists and merchants, where
    the government of the toilers is building a new life without these
    exploiters, there equality between women and men exists in
    law.

But that is not enough.

It is a far cry from equality in law to equality in life.

We want women workers to achieve equality with men workers not
    only in law, but in life as well. For this, it is essential that
    women workers take an ever increasing part in the administration
    of public enterprises and in the administration of the state.

By engaging in the work of administration women will learn
    quickly and they will catch up
 with the men.

Therefore, elect more women workers, both Communist and
    non-Party, to the Soviet. If she is only an honest woman worker
    who is capable of managing work sensibly and conscientiously, it
    makes no difference if she is not a member of the Party--elect her
    to the Moscow
      Soviet.

Let there be more women workers in the Moscow Soviet! Let the
      Moscow proletariat show that it is prepared to do and is doing
      everything for the fight to victory, for the fight against
      the old inequality, against the old, bourgeois, humiliation of women!

The proletariat cannot achieve complete freedom, unless it
      achieves complete freedom for
      women.

February 21, 1920

Women and
	Marxism - Lenin IndexCollected Works Volume 30Collected Works Table of ContentsLenin Works Archive